Technically, adding sugar without changing the hydration may affect the viscosity of the finished dough because sugar is hygroscopic. Maybe Roberto tweaks the water.

Roberto says that using dry yeast is fine. It should be easy enough to modify either of the above dough formulations to accommodate either ADY or IDY instead of fresh yeast. Using ADY might fit the method that Roberto uses better, specifically, splitting the water into two portions, one to receive the yeast and the other to receive the salt. But there is no reason why IDY can't be used.

One thing I learned about food in the US. The sources are limited to the suppliers. Having the same tomatoes means they buy from one of the larger suppliers or importers. Most restaurants buy from a large jobber or if a chain a central commissary. Some of the names around here are: Alliant, Sysco, US Foods, Roma Foods, Dairyland Foods, and a myriad of smaller local suppliers even Sams Club or Costco etc, etc. The products they sell are very similar brands from very large corporate identities. It is what the chef does with the raw ingredients that counts. That is what makes the difference. Sometimes the portion control items shipped frozen are the same everywhere. In the USA it is very unique, rare to find a place that uses ONLY locally produced in season foods.

The criscito, as far as I can figure, is a preferment that he recommends you get from your loacal bakery. Sorry, this ain’t Italia!

Anyway:

Dough for 4 people

Ingredients:

500 ml water900/1000 grams flour (adding or diminishing the amount as you go)6 grams of yeast100 grams of Criscito (sourdough)20/25 grams of salt1 Tablespoon of lard or butter melted2 teaspoons of sugar A drop of olive oil

Making the dough:

Put all of your ingredients within reach in order of kneading. In a container, if possible round, pour in the water and dissolve the yeast, the sourdough and the sugar, remembering to leave if possible a clean hand.

Add the flour and the salt, slowly we continue to knead and mix from bottom to top, then, we add the lard (or butter) and more flour.

We are almost finished, we amalgamate the oil well into the dough, and we end by drying out the dough with the flour.

The dough should pull away easily from the container, put it on the table, pull it out in a way that you can work the dough with both hands. Form it into a homogeneous piece. We cover it with the container and let it rest for 30 minutes. Punch it down and give it another 10 minutes of rest.

Last pass, we form it into little pieces proportional to the size of the oven, cover them and let them raise for about 5/7 hours, according to the ambient temperature where they are resting.

Cooking:

Preheat the oven to its highest temperature.

Stretch out the dough being careful not to touch the edges and we put it on a "griglia di forno" (peel?) with a narrow space so that the dough rests compactly. (In other words, close to the edge but not over.)

We add the seasoned tomatoes in order with salt, oil and basil. With a little brush lightly brush the edge with oil.

Now we can put the pizza in the oven, as soon as the dough begins to rise, we quickly add, mozzarella and what other ingredients please you and finish the cooking.

A friend of mine just gave me his DVD "Il Video per i Professionali della Pizza". Very good & very informative illustration on technique. The only thing is it's in Italian; lucky for me I'm pretty fluent

Antonino Esposito, a star of the Food Network in Italy and a renowned pizza chef of the style practiced in Naples, gave a demonstration at A Mano in Ridgewood yesterday...

A Mano means "by hand" in Italian. It's how all the food at A Mano in Ridgewood is made--lasagna, eggplant parmesan, salads, gelato, panini, but most especially the Neapolitan-style (Naples-style) pizza.

A Mano imports most of its pizza ingredients from Naples--whole peeled tomatoes, Caputo "00" flour, most importantly. When it opened two years ago, the owners had Italian craftsmen come in to build traditional igloo-shaped wood-burning pizza ovens from volcanic rock and soil from the Mt. Vesuvius area. The ovens operate at temperatures from 800 to 1,000 degrees. Twelve-inch pizzas--the traditional Neapolitan size--cook in 90 seconds, sometimes less.

Two weeks ago the owners brought in a celebrated master pizza chef, Antonino Esposito, who owns two respected pizza restaurants in his native Sorrento, to critique and tweak their operation and to give a demonstration to the public of traditional Neapolitan pizza making.

The good news for A Mano is that its own crew of pizzaiuoli (pizza-makers), trained in the 120-year-old Neapolitan style, and its equipment, received high marks from chef Esposito.

The chef began his demonstration by mixing flour, water, a bit of yeast and salt by hand in an aluminum bowl .

Then he removed the rough-surfaced ball (its skin, properly, having the texture of orange peel) on the marble counter (also imported from Italy) and let it rest under the over-turned bowl for about ten minutes, by which time its surface had turned silky.

Then he began gently yet firmly (a seeming contradiction, but if you were there you would know what I mean) working the dough .

Then he began to stretch the dough into a pie shape, the classic move of every pizza maker, foreign or domestic. One thing they don't do in Naples is toss the dough in the air as they stretch it. A stylistic no-no, Esposito (who speaks only Italian and was translated by A Mano co-owner Fred Mortati) pointed out.

To show the extreme elasticity of well-made pizza dough (and the quality of the imported Caputo flour), Espositio kept going well beyond the 12-inch round until the circle was perhaps three times that size and was so thin it was practically translucent. Mortati helped him hold up the dough.

Having finished his dough, master pizza chef Antonino Esposito, visiting restaurant A Mano in Ridgewood from Naples, Italy, demonstrated the correct way to turn a bowl full of whole peeled Italian tomatoes (pomodoro) into sauce for his classic Neapolitan-style pizza...

The aim is to squeeze and pull apart the whole tomatoes in such a way as to shred them and mix them with the tomato liquid to create a thick chunky sauce of even consistency.

Next, one of A Mano's pizzaiuoli (pizza makers), all of whom have been trained in the Neapolitan (soft crust) style, demonstrated the transformation of mozzarella curds into grapefruit-sized balls of silky mozzarella.

He first filled the plastic tub with the curds, which look like finely shredded bits of mozzarella with some of the soft, rounded surface of large-curd cottage cheese, but a little dryer.

Then he filled the tub with piping hot water, not boiling but hot enough to scald, and began working the curds into a thick sheet of elastic emergent mozzarella. Fred Mortati, co-owner of A Mano ("by hand") observed that a pizzaiuolo needs asbestos hands for this task.

As the water cooled slightly, the pizzaiuolo used long-handled wooden spoons to repeatedly stretch the mozzarella, eventually breaking off pieces and shaping them into balls with a deft technique that looks a little like peeling a banana but with more twisting and pinching.

After Esposito turned one of his perfect 9-inch dough domes into a perfectly round 12-inch dough disc, the A Mano pizzaiuoli added the crushed tomatoes, slices of fresh mozzarella and a whole basil leaf to create a Pizza Margherita, first served to Ita;y's Queen Margherita in 1889.

Soft and wet are the key adjectives for traditional Neapolitan pizza. Unlike the crisp crust ideal of Italian-American pizza, if a piece of pizza Napoletana doesn't droop when you lift it, something is wrong.

The style takes some getting used to. If the crust is made with the necessary finesse, the pizza has a light chewiness and the outside edges, spottedly charred, are almost nutty-flavored and pillowy.

I am wondering if they use lard, oil, or fats of any sort in the dough for this style of pizza.

THANKS!

Why did you not ask me? :-) They use Strutto, 'nzogna, or melted lard. They sprinkle it over the top before the pizza goes in in those huge bread ovens (some are 2 meters large). Some also use it in the dough from Sorrento to Salerno. The conncept of pizza by the meter took off very well in London few years ago with the fact that pizza was served on a stand, cutted in pieces for the whole table to share.